"The Gash" has been _renamed_: it is now to be known as "Mari's Gash".
She earned the distinction of having one of the best jumps in MOAB named after her by hanging half-way up on the face for over eight hours while a major technical rescue ensued. Not a scratch!!! We're glad you're not hurt, Mari. Please learn how to deal with those 180s. I have your container and I'll retrieve your canopy from the wall this weekend.
BACK TO THE PARTY!!!!!!!
-the moab party crew
Please e-mail me all the details.
Who is she?
What experience?
What happend?
Hi, Mick, my name is Mari, and I'm the one who kissed the cliff and enjoyed it so much I decided to hang out for eight more hours and fondle it. (Yeah, right.) Here's the much abbreviated version of the story...if you (or anybody else) have any other questions, you can email me or post them.
It was my fourth jump of the day on Thursday, my 10th BASE jump total (2 BD, the rest off cliffs in Moab), and it was a sunset load. We had jumped this particular cliff on the third jump of the day too. I went first, and had a left 180 on opening that turned extra fast due to a headwind. I don't load my canopy very heavily and I didn't run very hard off the edge, so my immediate riser input did very little to change my situation before I impacted the cliff, pushing off with my legs while still putting in riser inputs. I was almost turned around when I suddenly stopped falling. I was hanging from my end cell that had draped squarely over a large boulder sticking out on a ledge. I was therefore suspended by one riser, crooked in the harness, facing away from the cliff, 150 ft. above the talus, 200 feet below the overhanging edge. This overhanging edge is what caused most of the rescue difficulties--once they could finally get around the ledge down to my level, they were hanging out in space with no way to get in to me. Finally, on the third try, the rescuer was close enough to me to throw me a rope. I then had to pull him to me, hoping my canopy would hold. It did, and once he was able to get a climbing harness on me, we were lifted back up to the top of the cliff.
Medically, I am a walking miracle. People do not have this kind of accident and walk away--much less under their own power--without some serious divine intervention. I broke no bones and have no bruises. Only one tiny scrap on my chin where my opposite riser cut into my neck and face as I hung there. I have a lot of strained muscles...I hung from my right hamstring and left side for 8 hours, and I had to do pullups on my riser in order to breathe, so I feel like somebody took a baseball bat to most of those muscles. I don't have any feeling back in my fingers yet from the cold, but I'm sure that will come back eventually along with the feeling in parts of my left leg.
Earl, although you seem to have renamed the point already, I'd like you to consider renaming it "Angel's Point", in honor of both the divine angels and my human angels that saved me Thursday night. I don't know why they saved me, and maybe I didn't deserve to be saved, but they did. Eerily enough, Karen said that they actually saw one of the cliff's guardian angels...as I was being raised to safety with George (my rescue hero), they noticed that about 20 feet below and to the left of my canopy there was a white discoloration in the rock--in the shape of an angel.
To the Moab party crew--you all are awesome. I'm sorry I didn't get to see you all again before I left, but I hope to run into all of you again soon. Spike, thanks for keeping me company while I waited for help. We never made it for the pizza you promised, eh? Steve, you're a real sweetheart, and I guess you were right about stepping on the little black bacteria--bad karma.Gardner, I was especially sad not to run into you again Friday...I was gonna snag some of your pain pills.
And to everyone else--Blue Skies, from someone who looked big, black, squirmy death in the face and lived.
Hi Mari...I'm the volunteer commander of Grand County Search and Rescue (www.gcsar.org)...or at least was for the past three years until Jan. 1...and one of the 3 or 4 guys near you when you reached the top of the cliff. Your rescue was an exciting way to end my tenure in that position. I'm glad that you are ok...I'd still like to get with you via email or snail mail. You should know that your rescue was the most difficult and challenging that I have ever been involved with. It was a cooperative effort between about ten members of GCSAR and about a half-dozen rangers from the National Park Service...most of whom arrived back in Moab at about 3:30 Friday morning.
If we had been able to pinpoint your location from above more accurately, it might not have taken three attempts to get a rescuer to you. When we arrived, someone with your party kept insisting that if we went down the notch just to the northeast of you, we would be right on top of you. That is where we sent Jeff, the first rescuer...and he was unable to reach you. Due to the soft, unstable rock atop the cliff, it was virtually impossible to get anchors in directly above you...so we used directionals/pulleys/etc. to get the rope where it needed to be. And while we may have been able to get those anchors in, we decided that time was of the essence in reaching you. Setting up additional anchor systems, once we saw that the second attempt to reach you was still too far away, would have taken more time than we felt we had...though we did have additional ropes, gear, etc., on the way.
When we had fed George enough of his 300-foot belay line to throw to you, we had less than 10 feet left in that particular rope. We used well over 2,000 feet of rope in the operation (some of which had to be destroyed afterward) and went through about five re-chargeable batteries on our motorized drills...if we'd have had to drill any more holes, it would have been much slower by hand.
We were continually re-assessing the situation from atop the cliff...running all of the "what-ifs" through our minds. I really didn't want to think about what we'd have had to do if you would have been unable to pull George in to you. It appears the angels were watching over everyone that night...after we got Jeff back to the top, we discovered that one of his ropes was cut almost completely through from rubbing against the rock about 20-30 feet below the rim.
We have been involved in the rescue of three base-jumpers in the past two years. You were the least severely injured of the three. I still marvel at your "luck" in getting caught where you did. Though you picked a location that made access extremely challenging, you somehow picked a rock that was stable enough to hold you for several hours. Though I hope we do not have to be involved in another similar rescue, I must say that the challenging nature of your rescue has improved our capabilities to handle another one like it. Your rescue challenged our resources, abilities, and ingenuity. I'm thankful that everyone was able to walk away from the operation.
Judging by the male-female ratio of BASE jumpers, and comparing it to the male-female ratio of BASE injuries, I'd say the two don't even come close.
In other words, is it the lack of aggresiveness in females that causes them to get all busted up so damn much? What would Adam and Jimmy (from "The Man Show") say about this?
*The thinker
<center><font size="1" color="#ff0000">LAST EDITED ON Jan-03-00 AT 06:50 PM (EST)</font></center>
LAST EDITED ON Jan-03-00 AT 06:48 PM (EST)
ANYONE WITH 4 BASE JUMPS GOING TO MOAB IS NOT USING THEIR BRAIN! THIS MEANS YOU MARI! LUCK ONLY GOES SO FAR...
The person taking them there is even more to blame
THE JUMPER: The precedence has led you do these type of jumps with little or no experience and no business being there. There is tons of information, and lots of web site/papers etc. that will tell you the same thing: GET QUALIFIED AND GET MORE EXPERIENCE BEFORE YOU DECIDE TO LIVE WITH PEER PRESSURE TO GO JUMP WITH OTHER THAT ARE MORE QUALIFIED. There are many people with different types of intentions and some may be good. However, this does not mena they actually are thinking of your safety. This sport is very dangerous. Without adaquite knowledge, training and currency, it can quickly become deadly.
INSTRUCTORS: Think of it this way. If you tech someone and they are injured or die because of a mistake in how you taught them, IT IS YOUR FAULT! If you are qualified to teach, then teach qualified jumpers. If you are not qualified, you are arming unqualified jumpers with a false sense of security because they are looking at you as an authority. THIS IS NOT A GAME. THIS IS NOT "i want to teach someone so I can get a bigger ego". This is very serious.
I THINK YOU SHOULD READ SOMETHING THAT HAS BEEN OUT FOR ALMOST 6 MONTHS NOW:
http://www.baselogic.com/ibf/license.html
Mari, I am very glad that you are not hurt and think fabric is cheap! Lessons are a gold mine!
That is why everyone must exploit every lesson we run across and share it with as many people we can! Don't assume that someone else already knows! And always assume that someone "MAY" have less knowledge about this sport than you think.
Mick darling,
Your anger is misplaced. If not for the bigoted jackbooted thugs masquerading as Nazi Punk Service superintendents and administrators, you wouldn't have beginners daring death from 400-foot cliffs in Moab.
But those are the only cliffs that are legal and easily accessible, so just what exactly do you THINK is going to happen?
As for your licensing/rating system; I know you put a lot of work and thought into it but it's nothing more than a bad joke at the moment because just where exactly are all these beginners going to get all the intermediate jumps they need to do when basically every intermediate jump in this country is controlled by the Nazi Punks or illegal because it is private property?????
Mari made some mistakes and got one of those million dollar lessons for a dollar twenty-five, but cursing her and her companions simply plays into the hands of the Nazi Punks, my friend.
Moreover, it is not necessarily Mari's lack of BASE experience that got her; for two weeks, we kept hearing about the "party" in Moab, and let me try to be delicate here, but methinks it is never a party when the main attraction is jumping off cliffs.
It was the 1980 "party-on" attitude in Yosemite which gave the Nazi punks the ammo they continue to draw upon for their present pogrom against us -- a pogrom which has consequences like low-timers doing low-timers in the desert canyons of east central Utah.
This same attitude evinced itself at the Moab holiday "party:" Compare the injuries and incidents per-jump of that group with the stats for all the IPBC competitions and you'll see what I mean.
What we do is a _wild thing_ and there is a tendency to get even wilder when surrounded by our wild compadres, and so, to me, attitude management is at _least_ as important as pilot chute management, packing technique and site assessment -- ESPECIALLY when we have a big gaggle of wild ones out there having fun.
Moreoever, attitude management is far and away more important than the number of BASE jumps someone has, which is an utterly arbitrary measure of expertise.
I know people with five times as many BASE jumps as I have who wouldn't even think about doing half the sites logged in my book -- and if they did, they'd be carried out on a stretcher or in a body bag.
Why? Because they're not as good at it as I am, regardless of their jump number, and before you or anyone else obscenely objects to Mari or someone like her doing jumps at Moab, you ought to consider that.
I don't know Mari or her associates, and I don't think you do either. For all we know, she has 4,000 skydives, three medals in national accuracy competition, climbs 5.12 A6 and works high iron when she's not BASE jumping. Beyond that, people with lots more experience than she has have hit and/or snagged on walls in Moab and elsewhere.
And really, Mick, it's really in poor taste to be ragging on Mari & Co. after the crap you took in this forum for taking _your_ girlfriend to France and bringing her home in plaster after _she_ smacked a cliff... how many jumps does _she_ have? How current was _she?_
And speaking of current; you rag on Mari and demand that she and others read your licensing/currency system, after you went to Yosemite and did perhaps the highest-profile live-coverage BASE jump ever done... with one jumper who technically didn't even qualify as a student according to your own standards.
So I say again, Mick: Save it for the Nazi Punks. That is where you should direct your anger, and not toward your brethren and sistren.
Love,
BASE 44
Michelle had 125 BASE Jumps when she had her accident.
You need more fact about Yosemite before I will even think of returning a comment.
My hostility is because, yes, my partner with 125 jumps was injured. Then a 1 year vet with 300 jumps dies, and a high profile jumper with, I am not sure how many jumps Thor had, and so on.
The system I put together is a great way to show precidence to younger jumpers. There are dozens of places for a student/intermediate jumper to get experience besides Moab. License systems have been in the works for many years by many different people. I just seem to be the first person to openly advertise it at the risk of being flamed by everyone! And have been.
This is a SPORT, not a free-for-all. We have professional manufacturers, instruction programs, destination, tours and competitions. If we want to continue to be professional, we should act professional. Instead of continually having our antics blow up in our face.
Many jumpers get lucky. Mari got lucky. Some jumpers make dozens or even hundreds of jumps and get lucky. But luck is not what we should be relying on.
I know as much about what happened at Yosemite as you do, and I mentioned it to make the following point:
Jan Davis was completely qualified to make that jump -- but _NOT_ according to _your_ proposed licensing requirements.
It';s ridiculous to take a free-spirited activity like BASE jumping and create a bureaucracy to manage it.
What a JOKE.
Climbers are not licensed or rated -- the SITES ARE RATED.
Meticulously, too, I might add. Climbers manage themselves by rating the sites carefully and then trusting to Darwin and the general urge for self-preservation to do the rest.
All this BABBLE about licensing is ridiculous. The variations in personal skill and knowledge cannot be legislated or regulated by an arbitrarily arrived at set of requirements.
You're not an expert BASE jumper unless you make at least 75 a year? Give me a break.
And who is going to know how many you've made. Like Mark Hewitt once said to the Nazi Punks when they tried to use his BASE logbook against him in court: "That's a comic book I use to get laid."
That's the BOTTOM LINE, all you acolytes of ratings and licenses -- and it's ANOTHER reason the "legal program" in Yosem ite failed (as it was _designed_ to do by the Nazi Punks who dreamed it up...): skydivers would bring in their logbooiks and the rangers would go, "Duhhh? How do I know this is legit?"
SO I make 20 jumps a year, and forge the rest: Who is going to know, Mick? You have instructors, but no instructor/examiners, and no conference or national directors to ride herd on them... and what are you gonna do if you _do_) find forged credentials: cordon off the cliffs so the offending jumper can't jump them? Ha ha ha.
All your licensing/rating system is going to do is make an outlaw class among outlaws. None of you guys think past your nose on this one to the _enforcement_ provisions of your detailed little system.
If the Nazi Punk Service can't deal with it, just how _exactly_ are _you_ going to? Try spelling out in that document you have just _exactly_ how the enforcement provisions of all this stuff is going to work.
Seriously, figure THAT out before you even answer this post, and then maybe there will be some common ground.
Absent a _meaningful_ ability to enforce all these lovely new rules you have in mind for us, the whole premise is a joke, except for the totalitarian-oriented among us -- and those who want to create a pipeline where _they_ get to hold the courses and charge the money and control the sport and everything else.
And "sport" it may be, but in effect it's also a political, philosophical and religious movement and until all you rulemaker guys figure that out, you're going to be forever in the dark about what you're seeking to license and the consequences that derive therefrom.
Rating the _sites_, on the other hand, is eminently worthy and there already exists a very workable system already in place -- the one used by climbers.
That's where all of you guys ought to put your energy instead of mimicking USPA and the Nazi Punk Service.
Right now, though, you are aboslutely barking up the wrong tree.... and like the dog who does the same thing, you're working hard and earnestly and single-mindedly, and that's all noble and appreciated by all of us (especially me, as I know how much work it is to try and come up with a document like that), but the botoom line is:
It's still the wrong tree.
Love,
BASE 44
Mick,
I must agree with you, Moab is not a beginer site, and Mari was in over her head trying to BASE jump there. Your posting reminds me of Adam's warning to you and Michelle prior to your Europe trip and Michelle's accident. Sometimes, myself included, we let other factors (money/getting laid/Real TV/political status) make decisions for us. Then when something goes wrong; we blame luck. It is time we all realised when you try and turn a mental illness into a sport there will be casualties even when good decision making and common-sense are in effect.
Play safe.
ANDY WEST.
>It';s ridiculous to take a free-spirited activity
>like BASE jumping and create a
>bureaucracy to manage it.
Did you think of the precedence this would be setting? "Learn more before you jump", "Work harder to continue to learn", "Learn at your own pace, but understand your limits", and "Follow a global precedence, not someone with an ego to teach".
>Climbers are not licensed or rated --
>the SITES ARE RATED.
I am working on a site rating as well. But this will not instill precedence into people. The precedence right now is "Just get a rig and humitt! Little or no experience required. Darwin will have those who are good enough, survive".
>Meticulously, too, I might add. Climbers manage
>themselves by rating the sites carefully
>and then trusting to Darwin and
>the general urge for self-preservation to
>do the rest.
Rock climbing is much easier to regulate because, You enter the difficult area, and are stoped by your ability before you are at the point of no return. When a climber gets to a wall, they look up and see no way to get up, so they go somewhere else.
In BASE Jumping, as soon as you leave the object, you are at the point of no return. That means when you encounter trouble, it is too late to say "I am in over my head". You are already flooded. This is why climbing will never be like jumping!
>The variations in personal skill and
>knowledge cannot be legislated or regulated
>by an arbitrarily arrived at set
>of requirements.
That is exacly why there needs to be a defined system that will address personal progression, yet have a base line to define that progression.
>You're not an expert BASE jumper unless
>you make at least 75 a
>year? Give me a break.
We have people jumping three or more hundred jumps per year. If you set a precedence that you must take jumping seriously and preactice all the time, then people will.
>SO I make 20 jumps a year,
>and forge the rest: Who is
>going to know, Mick? You have
>instructors, but no instructor/examiners, and no
>conference or national directors...
I am not trying to make a USPA. I am trying to raise the bar of dedication to the sport of base jumping by making new people who do not know any better, have a safer outlook.
>and what are
>you gonna do if you _do_)
>find forged credentials: cordon off the
>cliffs so the offending jumper can't
>jump them? Ha ha ha.
A license will set precedence. If the precedence is "I can't jump this object until I get more experience", then a majority of the people will get more experience.
>All your licensing/rating system is going to
>do is make an outlaw class
>among outlaws.
No, this license is going to change a precedence to "be safer" instead of "Go hard and fast and learn later".
>Rating the _sites_, on the other hand,
>is eminently worthy and there already
>exists a very workable system already
>in place -- the one used
>by climbers.
Well if we only do this, here is what might happen. As I mentioned above, Climbers will not be able to further themselves past the point-of-no-return line like base jumpers cross every jump. So the precedence will be;
"I have the knowledge to jump a 5.5 object. But man would I be the coolest dude by going to that 5.13c and just winging it! Hey nobody told me I can't do it. Nobody told me I was not qualified to jump at tht level. Everyone just keeps mentioning this DARWIN thing. Who the heck is DARWIN? Oh well, billy jumped that 5.13c and lived. Hey I am a much better chess player that Billy. Chess is all about thinking. That's what I need in order to make a jump. So what, Billy has more experience than I do...I am jumping it anyway!"
Mick baby,
please define precedence. I have never heard it used in the context in which you are using it.
Maybe you are just misspelling it -
you set a precedent
something takes precedence over something else
from what I can gather, you mean standard all the places you say precedence. Please clarify this, as it currently Does Not Compute.
Secondly, please explain:
Who is going to PAY for this system?
Who is going to POLICE this system?
Who is going to PUNISH in this system?
ANd if you don't yet know that you can start a climb and then find yourself over your head and at a point of no return after you;'re there, then you have a couple of things to learn about climbing.
BUt I say again, sir: Until you can adequately answer the three questions posed two paragraphs above, you are pissing in the wind. whistling Dixie and barking up the wrong tree.
Love,
BASE44
This is in response to the posting from Base44. Robin, it's a shame that people like you feel the need to use an incident like this as an excuse to launch yet another mis-directed diatribe against the National Park Service.
There are plenty of less difficult jump sites in the Moab area...the NPS does not have every single one of them locked up. Your assertion that they do is pure uneducated bullshit and inflammatory tripe. There are countless miles of 500-foot cliffs, much of it easily accessible, which lie outside of any park boundaries. The "Nazi Punks, as you call them, are not the ones who forced Mari to jump where she did. That blame lies with her and with those in the so-called Moab Party Crew.
It was some of those "Nazi Punks" who helped save Mari's life. I have absolutely no doubt that had it not been for those skilled and selfless NPS Rangers and the members of Grand County Search and Rescue, Mari would not just have looked "big, black squirmy death" in the face...she'd be jumping with that "big, black squirmy" dude now.
I've read in the BASEboard that jumpers are always prepared for self-rescue...so their accidents will not put additional strain on local rescue groups. The "Moab Party Crew" chose to jump a nearly 500-foot cliff with less than 200 feet of rope, "a few carabiners," and, obviously, less than adequate knowledge of how to deal with complications.
Luckily, there happened to be a group of volunteers, and yes, NPS rangers, who had the expertise and the equipment necessary to deal with the situation. They didn't think twice about putting their lives (or New Year's Eve plans) in jeopardy to save someone's life.
Yet I have seen no acknowledgement of their efforts in this forum from any of you. Your tunnel-vision directs you to point the finger of blame (in the wrong direction) rather than try to understand how incidents such as this might have an effect on NPS and other governmental agency policies. If I had a jumpable cliff on my property, and you came to me with your all-too-apparent attitude, I'd lock the damn gate too.
But you should also be aware that if you ever do jump a cliff in the Moab area, there will be some volunteer rescuers, and some very skilled NPS rangers, who will do their best to see to it that you live through the experience...whatever it might be. Yes, we even rescue $%#holes.
Students get an impression from other jumpers and instructors. Is this precedence or a precedent? Everyone in the community has been setting a precedent by the views that you keep bringing up.
Who is going to PAY for this system? The price is far higher now than what it would cost if we had such a system. How much was rescuing Mari? What about the cost of rig damage? Loss of work? Hospital costs for an injury?
Who is going to POLICE this system? This system can change the mindset of active jumpers and new jumpers alike. This would make a truely "Self-regulating" sport. How can you self regulate if there are no regulations at all? We should have instilled reality and knowledge of the entire sport into students and low timers so that they would have an overwhelming instinct to self regulate.
Who is going to PUNISH in this system? When that person ignores the standards taught to him/her, the punishment is self inflicted. You hurt or injur yourself because you ignored what the community decided was minimum knowledge to stay safe. You bypass that, you are on your own. Just like the frre-form world you are talking about.
I, as well as many or maybe even most people have nothing against the S&R. In fact, it is situations like this that you guys shine. However, as with any hero, you typically end up in the shadows.
I for one have not taken any time to thank you for your efforts as I am focused on the problem.
As with the problem with the NPS, that lies with the law makers of the parks. Not the workers doing their job, and definately not the S&R.
I would love to have more dialog, and maybe even some tips and tricks for the upcoming Moab event.
I think that communications is good!
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